The Discovery Institute’s Misplaced Outrage

John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute's Center for (the Renewal of) Science and Culture, the most prominent ID think tank in the world, is mad as hell and he's not gonna take it anymore. It seems that a state legislator in Utah has submitted a bill in that state to give equal time in state science classrooms to teaching "divine design" along with evolution - and that just will not do. West is quite verklempt about the whole thing:

While it's frustrating when critics of intelligent design mischaracterize what ID is about, it's even worse when people billing themselves as friends of ID do the same thing. As the term "intelligent design" has increasingly entered the public discourse, the number of people misusing the term to advance their own agendas by calling it "design" has increased. Take the recent proposal by a Utah legislator for something he calls "divine design," by which he clearly seems to mean creationism...

I'd like to give a clear message to those who are trying to hijaack the term design in order to promote something else: Stop!

And he quotes himself being quoted in a Salt Lake Tribune article on this bill:

"We get very upset when supposed friends are claiming far more than what the scholars are saying," says John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture in Seattle...

"We wish [Buttars] would get the name right and not propose something he doesn't understand," West says.

Let me join West in expressing my outrage at Buttars' presumptuous "hijacking" of the term "intelligent design". I mean, where on earth could Buttars have ever gotten the idea that ID had something to do with "divine design" or anything to do with notions of God and divinity at all? He clearly hasn't been listening to the Discovery Institute's scholars, but only to us evilutionists who are bent on distorting their true intent. Shame on him!

On the other hand, perhaps Buttars is not "hijacking" the phrase
"intelligent design", and is instead simply relaying the plain meaning
that the fellows of the Discovery Institute Center for (the Renewal of) Science and Culture have given to it over the past several years.

Maybe he got that idea from prominent ID scholar William Dembski who famously said:

The world is a mirror representing the divine life. The mechanical philosophy was ever blind to this fact. Intelligent design, on the other hand, readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory."

Or perhaps he got it from prominent ID scholar Nancy Pearsey, who says:

By providing evidence of God's work in nature, it (intelligent design) restores Christianity to the status of a genuine knowledge claim, giving us the means to reclaim a place at the table of public debate. Christians will then be in a position to challenge the fact/value dichotomy that has marginalized religion and morality by reducing them to irrational, subjective experience.

Or perhaps directly from Phillip Johnson, the man most responsible for putting ID on the intellectual map and the primary architect of the Wedge strategy itself:

The Intelligent Design movement starts with the recognition that "In the beginning was the Word," and "In the beginning God created." Establishing that point isn't enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message.

And...

The objective [of the Wedge Strategy] is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to "'the truth" of the Bible and then "the question of sin" and finally "introduced to Jesus."

And...

Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools.

Or perhaps Buttars simply looked to the Wedge document itself, which describes in vivid detail the aims of the very organization that West represents and on whose behalf he is writing:

Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature.

See, the problem here for West is not that no one is listening to the ID scholars; the problem is that we are listening to them and their own words are in direct contradiction to the tactical marketing campaign that the DI is trying so desperately to run. It's the same catch-22 they've always been in. For legal purposes, they absolutely must separate ID from religion and they must pretend that ID is purely a scientific matter that deals with inferences of design, but the designer has nothing to do with God, it might just be an alien or something. But for fundraising purposes, they have to convince their followers that they are striking a blow against atheism and standing up for God - that's how you get the money flowing in.

So the fact is that they have had to keep up this silly charade for years now, where they pretend that ID has nothing to do with God and hope no one notices the enormous trail of writings and speeches and fundraising letters they've left behind that conclusively disprove that notion. And when someone does notice it, they accuse them of bias and ignorance, but they never bother addressing the evidence itself. So you'll pardon me for not taking West's feigned outrage seriously. Buttars is saying nothing different than what ID scholars have said a thousand times. The fact that it contradicts your current rhetorical and marketing strategy does not establish their ignorance, it establishes your duplicity.

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Intelligent design has been called â€œcreationism in a cheap tuxedoâ€ John West of the Discovery Institute finds his tuxedo disintegrating. John, spend some money on one and dump that cheap one. He complains that people, for some reason or another Read More

According to John West, Utah State Senator D. Chris Buttars has "hijacked" the word "design" as in "Intelligent Design" and turned it into, of all things, creationism by calling it "Divine Design" and wanting it to be part of Utah... Read More

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I should point out that even arch-theocrat Antonin Scalia has no patience for this kind of duplicitous “no one here but us secular chickens” doubletalk from religionists. In the recent 10 commandments case during oral argument, the state tried this same rhetorical tactic, trying to deny that such monuments were intended to be an endorsement of religion, to which the Justice responded:

“You’re watering it down to say the only message is a secular message,” the justice said. “I can’t agree with you. ‘Our laws come from God.’ If you don’t believe it sends that message, you’re kidding yourself.”

Keep in mind Scalia is creationism’s champion on the Court. If we know that the DI’s claims of secular pupose are a lie, and Scalia knows the DI’s claims of secular pupose are a lie, you can bet that John West knows he’s lying.

I bet that burns him up inside.

It’s almost enough to make me wish Yahweh existed so the DI fellows could see him weeping in shame.

It’s better to go along with the stories about gods than give in to what rge natural philosophers call Fate. If there are gods there is some hope of appeasing them with a little worship; if not, we are ruled by something that no one can appease.

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204)

Not everything mentioned in the Torah concerning the Account of the Beginning is as the vulgar imagine, for if the matter were such, …the Sages would not have expatiated on its being kept secret … The correct thing to do is to refrain, if one lacks all knowledge of the sciences, from considerating those texts merely with the imagination.

Steven Weinberg (l977)

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

It’s better to go along with the stories about gods than give in to what rge natural philosophers call Fate. If there are gods there is some hope of appeasing them with a little worship; if not, we are ruled by something that no one can appease.

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204)

Not everything mentioned in the Torah concerning the Account of the Beginning is as the vulgar imagine, for if the matter were such, …the Sages would not have expatiated on its being kept secret … The correct thing to do is to refrain, if one lacks all knowledge of the sciences, from considerating those texts merely with the imagination.

Steven Weinberg (l977)

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

“I mean, shit,” West continued, in an alternate universe in which he suddenly told the truth, “do you know how much money we’ve spent on this thing? Eighteen years, millions of dollars, coming up with a pseudosecular argument. Dozens of careers spent to create a creationism with the god stuff hidden. And for what? So some rube can stumble in and pull back the curtain? This makes me madder than Dover.”

Dembski’s latest offering is now posted. He refers only to space aliens, never to g/God. He seems to be towing the DI line, avoiding the supernatural and sticking to natural causes. Though all his writings betray him as well as his new job. Specification: The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence

It’s just a matter of “replace all” in word perfect.

But consider next a thought experiment. Imagine that space travelers show up on Earth loaded
with unbelievably advanced technology. They tell us (in English) that they’ve had this
technology for hundreds of millions of years and give us solid evidence of this claim (perhaps by
pointing to some star cluster hundreds of millions of light years away whose arrangement
signifies a message that confirms the aliens’ claim). Moreover, they demonstrate to us that with
this technology they can, atom by atom and molecule by molecule, assemble the most complex
30
organisms. Suppose we have good reason to think that these aliens were here at key moments in
life’s history (e.g., at the origin of life, the origin of eukaryotes, and the origin of the animal
phyla in the Cambrian). Suppose, further, that in forming life from scratch the aliens would not
leave any trace (their technology is so advanced that they clean up after themselves perfectly —
no garbage or any other signs of activity would be left behind). Suppose, finally, that none of the
facts of biology are different from what they are now. Should we now think that life at key
moments in its history was designed?
We now have all the independent knowledge we could ever want for the existence and attributes
of materially embodied designers capable of bringing about the complexity of life on earth. If, in
addition, our best probabilistic analysis of the biological systems in question tells us that they
exhibit high specified complexity and therefore that unguided material processes could not have
produced them with anything like a reasonable probability, would a design inference only now
be warranted? Would design, in that case, become a better explanation than materialistic
evolution simply because we now have independent knowledge of designers with the capacity to
produce biological systems?
This prospect, however, should raise a worry. The facts of biology, after all, have not changed,
and yet design would be a better explanation if we had independent knowledge of designers
capable of producing, say, the animal phyla of the Cambrian. Note that there’s no smoking gun
here (no direct evidence of alien involvement in the fossil record, for instance). All we know by
observation is that beings with the power to generate life exist and could have acted. Would it
help to know that the aliens really like building carbon-based life? But how could we know that?
Do we simply take their word for it? If design is a better explanation simply because we have
independent knowledge of technologically advanced space aliens, why should it not be a better
explanation absent such evidence? If conventional evolutionary theory is so poor an explanation
that it would cave the instant space aliens capable of generating living forms in all their
complexity could be independently attested, then why should it cease to be a poor explanation
absent those space aliens? The point to appreciate is that specified complexity can demonstrate
this poverty of explanation even now — apart from space aliens and bizarre thought
experiments.

For pointless existence, it’s hard to beat biblical Christianity, in which one can only plausibly view oneself as a little meat puppet in a cosmic play, the end of which is already known to the audience and author (in God, one and the same); and the purpose of which is to magnify the glory of a being to whom nothing can be added and from whom nothing can be taken away. If the manifest absurdity of that proposition isn’t the very definition of pointless, then the word itself is pointless.

For my statement of purpose, I turn to the TV character, Angel:

“If there’s no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters… then all that matters is what we do … now, today. All I want to do is help … because people shouldn’t suffer as they do. If there isn’t any bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.”

I do not see that any idea within religion improves on this simple thought.

What’s hilarious to me is that the Institute is, in effect, arguing that something “divine” isn’t “intelligent.” They’re not saying it’s a subset, or one spectrum of thought. Instead, they’re completely disassocating themselves with it.

Hate it for all of the people who believe in “divine” power. Apparently that’s just not smart. :)

Dumbski said:
But consider next a thought experiment. Imagine that space travelers show up on Earth loaded with unbelievably advanced technology…
If conventional evolutionary theory is so poor an explanation
that it would cave the instant space aliens capable of generating living forms in all their complexity could be independently attested, then why should it cease to be a poor explanation absent those space aliens?

Right now I have this methodological, naturalistic explanation for where my childhood christmas presents came from. They came from my parents. If Santa Claus lands, and claims responsibility, and demonstrates this phenomenal nanotechnology you speak of, I’ll reconsider. But absent that Santa Claus, I think my explanation’s pretty good. Dumbass.

Hell hath no fury like a scammer spoiled. The car shark caught stacking the deck. The used car salesman seen fiddling with the car’s odometer… they lash out at their intended victims, crying hypocrisy.

Forget about space aliens. I’m sure that Oprah would find a spot on her schedule for the Lord Almighty should he decide to want to tell us in person how he created life on this planet.

Dembski’s little thought experiment is utterly useless. Imagine the same space aliens dropping by again and telling us, oh, we forgot to tell you… We also left a set of self-replicating nanobots on your planet that control your climate and weather patterns. Without them, Earth would be a barren ball of fire. Oh, and by the way, that theory of plate tectonics you keep talking about - ahem, sub-crustal mega-machines - just to keep things flowing smoothly, you understand.

I like what PZ said the other day, Steve, in a similar vein. I hope I’m not misquoting here, but the basic idea is that if a god were to come down with great displays of proof for his existence and power, that would probably change many people’s minds about the existence of a god, but it would do nothing to our acceptance of evolution, which has been confirmed by no less proofs than what this god purports to offer.

So even if Santa WERE real, the “naturalistic” explanation is STILL “pretty good”!

The Intelligent Design movement starts with the recognition that “In the beginning was the Word,” and “In the beginning God created.” Establishing that point isn’t enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message.

…from the godfather of ID himself, it’s game over for ID as a secular movement. John West may twist and squirm, but there is no avoiding the hypocrisy of his whinging.

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.

Billy: “Look, mom. Let’s say space aliens landed, and told you they broke the lamp, and demonstrated the necessary technology. You’d believe them, right? So if conventional Billy-broke-the-lamp theory is so poor an explanation that it would cave the instant space aliens capable of breaking lamps in all their shattering complexity could be independently attested, then why should it cease to be a poor explanation absent those space aliens?”

So when Creationists lump the Big Bang and in with evolution, is that a false premise?
Couldn’t panspermia be a possibility for either model of origins?

Miller’s experiments proved it wasn’t necessary for panspermia or a designer for life to begin on this earth (at least to me.) Did anyone catch the round-table discussion of origins on Coast to Coast AM last night, they had “all” 4 models of origins there, except evolution (unless I missed the speaker somehow.) Remember though that this is also the show that has Sylvia Brown, people who belive Nostrodamus meant New York, and just about any whacko with a conspiracy theory.

Can any tell me or point me to some links that explain how the “Wedge Strategy” document surfaced, who (if known) leaked it, and what the public reaction was of those who had signed it? Silence or outright denial? Thanks in advance.

(Basically I want to know if the document could ever be entered as evidence in a court of law.)

He isn’t on about space aliens again, is he? How does he think space aliens could have created life on Earth unless they were a fundamentally different animal from a carbon-based lifeform? Does he have any explanation at all about how these space aliens might themselves have originated, or is that somehow not relevant?

I don’t think anyone knows who leaked the document, but it’s a fact that the DI has, at the very least, not repudiated its contents.

If it was a fraud, the DI would have been shouting that from the rooftops for the past several years - it’s not like they’re reluctant to point out other so-called “fraudulent claims” when they arise. That speaks volumes to me.

If it came down to it, if any of the erstwhile DI fellows ever makes it to the witness stand in a court of law, I doubt they would risk perjuring themselves by denying the document’s authenticity.

However, I’m sure they have plenty of doublespeak reserved for whenever that day does eventually come to explain the document away.

Well, here’s an even more fun thought experiment: Suppose space aliens show up and…

Where then does that leave Biblical fundamentalism, or even any other milder claim that the bible (or any other religious book for that matter) has any claim on anyone? In point of fact, such an event would be devastating to all systems of religious thought-but especially to Christianity.

This would then remove any claim that the space aliens have to being “worshipped” as “divine”. I can see no way any space alien would have any possible moral claim on humans. Now they might be able to make an argument that they know a few things about health practices or have a few ideas about how to deal with world hunger-but we would be under no obligation to adopt their solutions.

The irony is amazing. Evolution at least leaves open the possibility that a divine being subtly manipulates the process in ways we do not understand. If such a being does exist, it perhaps makes a claim to being worshipped.

But the “space aliens” did it is the triumph of the crasses, crudest most vulgar materialism possible.

And personally, I think we should go with this. We should tie ID to the the theory that space aliens made it and offer fundamentalists a choice: the devil they know (evil Darwinists) or the Devil they don’t (people who want to teach their kids they were made by space aliens).

He isn’t on about space aliens again, is he? How does he think space aliens could have created life on Earth unless they were a fundamentally different animal from a carbon-based lifeform? Does he have any explanation at all about how these space aliens might themselves have originated, or is that somehow not relevant?

Actually, considering we only one example of a template for life to go on, it is entirely possible that there is an alien lifeform out there that when we look at it, we will go “Doh! How simple, it’s obvious how it evolved.”

That’s why the prospect of discovering life on Mars or Europa is so fascinating - we *may* have a second template for life to compare ours with (assuming we didn’t, er, cross-pollinate).

But the real point is that Dembski’s analogy is useless since you can apply the same reasoning to anything and everything (nothwithstanding that many people do just that :-)

After all, the denizens of the planet Magrathea didn’t stop at just building people…

And personally, I think we should go with this. We should tie ID to the the theory that space aliens made it and offer fundamentalists a choice: the devil they know (evil Darwinists) or the Devil they don’t (people who want to teach their kids they were made by space aliens).

Hey Bill, I know you’re out there. A question for you —- were you lying to us when you cliamed that the designer COULD be a space alien, or were you lying to us when you claimed that it COULD NOT be . …?

Make up your friggin mind, would you?

Well (an I’m just spitballing here) they could have been noncorporeal space aliens, like the Bajoran prophets in the wormhole in Deep Space 9.

Dembski’s gallimaufry is truly pathetic. Where are the space aliens? Unless Dembski can produce them on demand this argument should be trashed with the contempt it deserves. With arguments like these Bill D looks like he is sawing the branch he is seated on. In the unlikely event that Bill D’s space aliens land up here, I am sure scientists will be busy quizzing them about their methods and technology and will be busy conducting experiments. Bill D and the IDoC crowd will get ready to deny the latest evidence and petition the school boards to teach non-alien ID.

This is a hilarious story, as a native Utahn I thought I would give everyone some more insight into just how incompotent Senator Buttars is. Apparently while defending his stance on “divine design” he said that he figured evolution was ridiculous because: “We get different types of dogs and different types of cats, but you have never seen a ‘dat.” Well, there were several dozen letters to the editor about what an idiot Buttars is, and he hasn’t made any comments since on the subject. Mabye when there is such an idiot promoting ID in schools, it actually helps everyone else whose is trying to promote real science in the classroom.

I’m not one who’s prone to wishful thinking, and I think that this may be the beginning of the end for Big Billy D.

He finally said something so transparently ridiculous that even the easily fooled will see through it.

He was saying, “I have several PhDs, and my equations show that the bacterial flagellum is too complex to have evolved”. That may fool a lot of people. But…

“You’d agree that space aliens did it if you saw space aliens and they told you so - so you have to agree that space aliens did it even if you DON’T see space aliens”. Nope, not gonna fly.

Personally, if space aliens told me that they created life on earth I’d be very, very skeptical. And it would be obvious that evolution still accounts for most of what we see. Unless they were lying space aliens (perhaps ID advocates banished from another planet for dishonesty), they’d have to mean that they had some limited but important role. But if they denied that life had evolved at all on earth, they’d just be intergalactic creationist con men.

Unless they were lying space aliens (perhaps ID advocates banished from another planet for dishonesty), they’d have to mean that they had some limited but important role. But if they denied that life had evolved at all on earth, they’d just be intergalactic creationist con men.

If conventional evolutionary theory is so poor an explanation that it would cave the instant space aliens capable of generating living forms in all their complexity could be independently attested, then why should it cease to be a poor explanation absent those space aliens?

We’d still be asking, how did the space aliens originate, and the answer would still be evolution.

But Dembski is absolutely right: The actual visit from the designing space aliens does not matter, if

…in addition, our best probabilistic analysis of the biological systems in question tells us that they exhibit high specified complexity and therefore that unguided material processes could not have produced them with anything like a reasonable probability…

But unfortunately, we are at square one:
- The best probabilistic analyses are not quite good.
- Specified complexity? Discuss.
- Unguided material processes? Not in Evolution, sorry.
So we have straw men, non sequiturs and the works.
Of course, if you assume ID to be proven, then it really doesn�t matter, who the designer in fact is. But: ID has not been proven. (And, given the frenetic pace new results are published even as we speak, this could take some more days…)

And if I may be so bold as to follow up, and in apologies for the double post, - curse you Safari! - Dembski’s “argument” could also be presented thus, say 500 years ago - (though undoubtedly in Latin):

“Now all educated and thinking men accept the world as Designed and Created, and we have the unerring Word of God in testimony to this fact. But consider next a thought experiment. Imagine that over the next several hundred years, men of learning discover evidence that the apparent design in Nature can be explained by completely Natural Causes; that is, the material, formal and efficient causes arise from the interplay of Chance and Nature herself, giving the illusion of a Final Cause. They tell us that they’ve come to this conclusion after using a new technique of the Sciences and give us solid evidence of this claim (perhaps by pointing to some hundreds of millions of data points from multiple disciplines whose agreement strengthens these “scientist” claims). Moreover, they demonstrate to us that with technology they can, repeatedly, in experiment and observation, demonstrate the principles involved in this process… Suppose, finally, that the facts of biology and geology describe a reality at odds with the one depicted in Holy Scriptures, indeed even with the Four Causes of Natural Philosophy. Should we now think that life at key moments in its history was designed?”

The objective [of the Wedge Strategy] is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to “‘the truth” of the Bible and then “the question of sin” and finally “introduced to Jesus.”

They’re dreaming. They’ve got it all backwards. Fundies are attracted to Creationism because their pastors tell them that as Christians that’s what they’re supposed to think. The core audience of creationism is people who are already fundies.

People do NOT come to Christianity because ‘creationism is so compelling’. If anything, creationism turns away far more people from Christianity than it attracts. (A point that has been made by several more level-headed Christians.)

It reminds me of an old argument for the existence of God (and I’m paraphrasing here): “If God is good, is it not better to believe in God than to not believe in God?”
Or: “You may not go to Heaven or Hell if you don’t believe in God, but IF there is a God, your chances of finding everlasting peace and life are greater, thus choose God.”

John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture Wrote:

While it’s frustrating when critics of intelligent design mischaracterize what ID is about, it’s even worse when people billing themselves as friends of ID do the same thing.

John, you had your chance and blew it. A decade ago Michael Behe made it clear that the only promising ID model was strictly old earth and common descent, and sounded honest (to me at least) about his uncertainty that the designer was the Judeo-Christian God, or that caricature god of the creationists. Since then many IDers have made it a point to say “we’re not creationists.” OK, then why haven’t most IDers put their money where their mouths are by giving “equal time” to criticizing creationism - at least the YEC claims that they seem to know are absurd? Or at least emphasizing that Behe’s alternative origins model provides no comfort to YECs or OECs who deny common descent? You know why. You need the political support of the creationists, and there’s no way to do that without framing ID as an alternative to evolution. Yet most of you seem to know that it is not, but at best a complementary unscientific idea. You also seem to know that there’s no connection between your “evidence of design” and the “arguments against evolution” that you ripped off from the creationists. Except of course as a convenient bait-and-switch when the going gets tough. But you continue to pretend otherwise, so this is what you get. Enjoy!